The Good Sister
by Laura Schiller
Summary: Based on "Atlantia" by Ally Condie. Five times Bay didn't feel worthy of her image, and one time she did.


The Good Sister

By Laura Schiller

Based on: Atlantia

Copyright: Ally Condie

1.

Whenever Rio forces her to do something with her siren voice, Bay is terrified. Her sister's face is immovable as the stone gods in the temple, her voice rolling through the recycled air like the waves of the sea outside. They are only seven, but she looks and sounds as old as Atlantia itself.

Bay's hands shake with her sobs as she takes off the new dress Mother gave her for temple services. _("If Bay gets a dress, why can't I get one?" "We can only afford one, Rio, and you know you mustn't go out in public until you've learned to control your voice.")_ But when she rips a hole in the blue-green silk, she does it on purpose. If she can't wear it, neither should Rio.

"How could you?" Bay screams later, from the safe circle of Mother's arms. "I hate you! I'll never forgive you!"

Rio's stone face crumbles, and it's her turn to sob. The ceiling lamp swings, the water in its bowl on the altar ripples, and even Mother trembles with the power of a siren's remorse.

Mother speaks sternly and lovingly to them both, and Rio never uses her voice on Bay again. But in her secret heart, Bay is still not sure if she really can forgive her twin that day.

2.

Bay is seventeen and comes home still tingling from the heat of Fen Cardiff's body against hers. As she climbs into bed next to Rio, she wonders deliriously if she smells different. What if the smell wakes Rio up and she demands an explanation? The thought makes her bite her lip to hold back a giggle. Moments later, though, with Rio's sleeping face beside her, all the hard lines of self-control softened for once, it isn't funny anymore. Rio's never been on a date, not even once.

Bay knows it's wrong. Fen can never marry her with the disease already in his blood. She can't be infected by it, but their children could. That's why he brought birth control. He may be reckless in the night races, but he's careful with her – one of the many things she loves about him.

She listens to the city breathing, slow and steady, and remembers him gasping her name in a voice rough from coughing. She remembers the beads of salt water on his skin, the softness of his hair. _I could die right here, _he whispered against her neck. _That would be the best death I could imagine._

_Don't you dare, _she hissed, the gentle sister suddenly sharp and demanding. _Don't you dare talk like that. You're going to live for a long time, is that clear?_

_Yes, Minister. I live to serve. _And they laughed together in the darkness of his room, shutting their eyes to the shadows around them.

3.

Dressing Mother for death is horribly like, and unlike, dressing a doll.

Her body is limp, her hair dry, her eyes glassy and unmoving. It feels like a violation of privacy to wash her, clip her nails, button her robe up to the collar. She half expects Mother to sit up, wave their hands away with a laugh and say, _Waters alive, girls, I can manage this myself! _

Even now, Bay cannot forget her plan. She slips the wedding ring off Mother's cold finger, then makes a show of pretending to have left it at home. She leaves the floodgate chamber as fast as possible without looking back.

In one of the changing cabinets at the swimming pool, Bay passes the ring to Fen without meeting his eyes.

"You – you sell it," she chokes. "Not me. I'd be recognized. And – and don't give it to some crook who'll undercharge you." Efram's teeth. She's bargaining like a deepmarket merchant over the last family heirloom she has left.

Fen puts his arms around her and strokes her hair. She shivers from the cold of his wet swimsuit and the force of her tears.

"I know just the lady," he says. "She admired your mother more than anyone. She'll treat it with respect."

How does he know? People say she's the one who lives for the public good, but Fen is the only one – including even Rio – who lives for hers.

4.

"You can't tell Rio. You mustn't."

Maire's voice, though unpowered, is deep and commanding. She sits with her hands in her lap, her black robe smoothly ironed, even the shells in the bowl in front of her arranged in perfect chaos. The only thing uncontrolled about her aunt is her wildly curly hair.

"Why not?"

"People never forgive you for telling them truths they don't want to hear."

She's never had a secret from her sister, and now she has so many. Maire's stories; Mother's murder; those Above and their hatred of sirens; Fen. Lying to Rio feels unnatural, like holding her breath too long. But Bay suspects that she is sitting opposite the smartest woman in Atlantia, and that this woman has a point.

"She won't forgive me if I leave," Bay whispers, the words too painful to say out loud.

Rio. Stared and whispered at for her flat voice, her losses, her loneliness. Scrubbing bat droppings from the trees while the other acolytes polish statues, replace candles and clean the rose window in cheerful unison.

"If I were you," says Maire, "I'd leave a back door open. Some sign or clue for her, just in case. _We_ know why she shouldn't leave Below, but if she's got even a drop of Oceana's blood in her veins, she'll try anyway. She might as well be forearmed."

Bay always believed it was their father's blood that made Rio so stubborn: the blood of the man who interrupted a total stranger's reading to ask her on a date, who trained himself ruthlessly for the races, who debated politics with his wife even from his hospital bed. But looking at Maire makes her reconsider. She smiles with the left side of her mouth. The resemblance to Rio is uncanny.

_The resemblance to me, _Bay corrects. How ironic that the normal twin is about to manipulate the siren.

5.

The merchant looks as round and red as the apples in his cart. His face is shiny with sweat in the glare of the electric street lights that banish the nighttime stars. The smells of smoke, frying oil, exhaust and sweat crowd the air of the market. Rio always believed the lack of a metal sky would mean freedom, but this doesn't feel like it.

"Five coin."

"But I – I only have - " Bay takes the single coin, her day's wages, out of her pocket.

"If you don't have them, move. Go on, seaweed, you're holding up the line."

He glares at her and waves his hand as if to wave away a fly. There were no flies in Atlantia, but she knows them now. She stumbles away.

Seaweed. How can he tell she's from Below? Is it the dirty workers' uniform she's wearing, the pallor of her skin that's never known sunlight? Or is it her accent? Either way, she feels the word like a slap across the face.

She forgot to buy food on her first day, and now she's worked through two days processing ore from the Below. She's so hungry she can't think straight, and Fen, who's waiting in their quarters for her to bring them dinner, is hungry _and _sick. She could murder that fat, stupid, careless merchant with her bare hands.

Then she's horrified by her own thoughts. She'd never do that. It's not who she is.

The apple man is laughing with another customer, joking about healthy appetites as he piles fresh fruit into a grocery net. Clinking coins change hands. The people standing in line chat with each other, or into the small metal machines they hold to their ears. No one is watching.

Bay carries a toolbox in one aching hand. Quick as one of Fen's dives into the racing pool, two apples disappear into the box.

_This isn't who I am, _she whispers to her patron goddess, Indie the seagull, who when a great plague was raging through the cities Above, flew her loved ones to safety on shining white wings._ Please remember that._

But she's no longer sure the gods even exist.

1.

She's in the temple Below, and people are staring.

It's worse than the school play when she was eight. The faces she has known and loved for seventeen years blur into a single many-eyed monster waiting to swallow her. And Oceana, Fen, Maire and most of all Rio are not there.

Two are dead. The other two have bet their lives on her ability to speak.

Part of her wants to hide under the embroidered cloth draped over the altar. She is tired of people relying on her, expecting her to be perfect. She wants the right to be flawed for once.

But it's thinking of them that allows their voices to reach her.

_Tell them the truth, _she hears Maire say in her mind, hard and shiny as one of her shells. _No matter how ugly it is, it's what they need to hear._

_Let them know how much you love this city, _Oceana murmurs.

_Help me, _Fen rasps. _Come back to me._

_You don't have to be perfect, _she imagines Rio's siren whisper. _Just be you._

She is no siren. She cannot draw power from the water above her or from the bats fluttering by the rose window in flashes of blue outside. But she can draw power from the people who love her.

She brushes the dirt off her uniform, stands up tall, and lifts up her voice.

"_Listen."_


End file.
